I’m not sure if I mentioned it here before, but a few months ago I told my wench troupe (and the producer of our first and only album)* that I want us to have a half-dozen original songs for Just Desserts to add to our repertoire. That way, we can freshen up our live act and have some original songs for our second album, should we record one. They all thought it was a great idea. And they all declared themselves completely incapable of writing any of them… which left me to undertake it.

With their enthusiastic encouragement, many misgivings and tons of bravado, I said I’d give it a whirl. And a couple of weeks ago, at a wench rehearsal that included our producer, I was pressed to declare myself.

“So, Toni, how many songs do you intend to write this year?” Our producer had a pen poised, ready to write down my answer.

My reply was scared laughter, followed by, “Oh, Ozzy, you delusional bastard! One does not plan to write songs. One hopes to write them.** And given how long it’s taken me to get the women’s birthday ditty*** written, I wouldn’t dare make a prediction.”

On the drive home from rehearsal, the hook line and tune for a song popped into my head, along with the idea for a second song. By bedtime, I had worked out the chorus and the structure for first one. And the next morning, I opened up a google doc and wrote it. It took only a couple of hours to compose, tweak and record a stripped-down version of it. I emailed an mp3 of that recording to the rest of the group and was thrilled that they really like it!

Once we record it (we haven’t even rehearsed it yet, although we will tonight) and post it somewhere (perhaps on youtube), I’ll post a link to it, so you can hear how it turned out.

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* I’ve linked the phrase to our amazon.com page, but wanted to let you know that album is also available from a myriad of other sources, including iTunes, Grooveshark, and Bandcamp. In all, there are at least a dozen ways to listen to and/or purchase the album or its individual tracks, some of them free! If you should listen to any of it and want to share your thoughts or impressions, I’d love to hear them.

** Even as I said this to Ozzy and the group, I realized how stupid it was. Of course one plans to write songs! Isn’t that what song writers do every frakkin’ work day?!

I think I was just caught off guard by the question and was afraid to think of myself as an actual song writer, given my miniscule experience in that arena and the obligation that title would imply.

The truth is, if you don’t plan to write, that is, make time to sit down and write, you won’t get anything written. And the very act of making yourself available to write will shift your mental gears so you can make writing progress.

So, officially, let me state that I plan to write a total of six new wench songs (including the one above) for us to add to our repertoire for the 2015 Hoggetowne Medieval Faire. Which means I’ll be writing them throughout the summer and fall, so we can learn them and work them into our act before the year ends.

And with the second of those six songs very nearly finished, too, I have increasing confidence that I can do it!

*** Don’t ask me how, but I completely forgot I’d written the Lasses’ Birthday Ditty (previous post). Wow. And I didn’t record it anywhere, so the melody is lost. Perhaps I’ll get it back? If so, there’s new song no. 3! Woo-hoo!

Before last year’s Hoggetowne Medieval Faire, I wrote a tune and lyrics for my wench troupe, Just Desserts, to perform for any men in the audience who were celebrating their birthdays. It came to me very quickly and was, in fact, the first song I’d ever written. It’s cute and catchy (and posted below somewhere), but it can help us commemorate the special days of only the males who were stupid brave enough to let us know about their birthdays.

The ladies were left out in the cold.

Now there’s nothing we wenchy types hate more than a woman being left out of something good, so I vowed to write a birthday song for the fairer sex… and nothing came to me. Several times. For months.

And now that the 2014 faire is just around the corner (Jan 25-26, Jan 31-Feb 2), my time running out, I have finally put pen to paper** to write the following:

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Lasses’ Birthday Ditty

Today you’re a wench,You’re a saucy, flirty wench.All the world is now at your feet.

What will you do?It’s entirely up to youAs a new year of life you greet.

Have some laughs. Have some drinks.Give the lads some naughty winks.Take a nap. Catch your breath. Repeat.

(spoken by Cupcake***): Now, girls, don’t overwhelm the poor lass!

Do what you willWith whoever fits your bill,As you celebrate your favorite way.

There’s a secret wenches know,And now on you we will bestowAs our gift to you this special day:

Whether single or a wife,With a healthy lust for life,You can be a wench every day.

** Yes, I scrawled the first draft on the back of a (photocopied) crossword puzzle. I would’ve felt silly – or perhaps paralyzed – if I’d opened a Word doc for such a short piece. That would have been waaaaay to much pressure, ya know?

*** Cupcake is the name of the wench character I play. She’s my sweet, silly, flirty, naughty alter ego, and I love her!

Yep, I’m back at it. No, I’m not doing NaNoWriMo. I just thought it was time.

Okay, okay, I will admit that I’ve been reading blog posts about NaNoWriMo, offering encouragement and support. I’ve also been reading comments from other writers and wanna-bes who are slogging their ways through their own writing projects (both in and out of the program. And they’ve goaded me more than a little to get back to my own novel-in-progress.

I don’t know how long the momentum will last or how far I’ll get this time, but progress is progress… and I’ll take it.

Any of you taking a stab at NaNoWriMo? Or just, you know, writing on your own? I’d love to hear about it. Leave me a comment? Thanks.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m thrilled to have reached a milestone like this, even if it is only about 10 percent of the usual word count on a finished novel.

My lack of more effusive celebration is due entirely to the problem I alluded to in the post title. And that problem is also the reason it took me so long to get past this significant-seeming milepost. (Errr, wordpost??)

The problem: I don’t know what my main female character’s deepest motivation is. In other words, I don’t know what she really wants. And as a novel is generally best when the main characters all want something very badly and spend the book interacting and affecting one another as they try to get those things, it behooves me to figure out what my gal wants.

At this point, she’s more drifting than moving. I need to get to the core of the woman’s motivations, because nothing stalls a book (or a life) more than having no idea where you want to go.

Can you say “fiction mirroring the author’s psychological state”? Because I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up… except very, very old.

Until I get this sorted, I fear my writing is going to be done more in fits and starts than in regular progress.

It’s a little scary.

Can anyone suggest a tool I can use to psychoanalyze my heroine? I could really use the help.

… Stephen King when I write drama*, like David Foster Wallace and Arthur Clarke* when I write romance***, and like Chuck Palahniuk and Charles Dickens when I write blog posts.

I know, right?! Pretty heady comparisons!

And, no, I did not make this up.

And also no, I don’t try to write like anyone other than myself, although there’s always seepage, they say.

In fact, I couldn’t have been influenced directly by three of these authors – Clarke, Foster Wallace, and Palahniuk – as I’ve never read any of their works. [Confession: I’m now sorely tempted to correct those reading oversights. Because if they write like me (ahem), I’ll probably really like them!]

I have read King and Dickens extensively.

King was one of my earliest favorite authors, as I started reading his stuff when I was a teenager (yes, a million years ago) and consider him an amazing writer. There’s not much of his oeuvre that I haven’t read (except the Gunslinger series, which started coming out when I wasn’t very patient with serial fiction), and I consider The Stand to be a masterpiece.

I didn’t get into Dickens until I was an adult, but have read and loved his works.

The Meyers thing? I don’t know where that came from. Nope, no Twilight for me. My sole foray in Meyerdom was The Host… which was pretty darned good, but hardly powerful enough writing to have been an influence.

So, if I didn’t make these comparisons up, where do they come from? From here. I read about I Write Like in a blog post by Wil Wheaton, in which he discovered he writes like Cory Doctorow, too. (I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the coincidence makes my inner Wheaton-fangirl squee a little… and I wouldn’t lie to you… Really. Promise. Ahem.)

Who do you write like? Go find out, then leave me a note in the comments to tell me, ‘kay?

My house has been unusually quiet, so I’ve had time and few physical distractions, but my brain has been scattered.

The most I’ve been able to do is go through the eight chapters I’ve written so far and create a character spreadsheet, so I can keep track of names, descriptions, relationships. It’s not on any specialized writing software, just Excel. And I expect I’ll keep adding to it until I get to the point where I don’t add named characters (even “extras”). It’s also given me a chance to look at the age/racial/gender roles I’ve assigned, so I can avoid the mistake of making everyone generic. I want the book, set in modern-day Florida, to reflect the diversity of people who are actually here now.

So no writing, but progress nonetheless. I feel like I can move forward now without worrying that I’ll contradict or repeat stuff I’ve already committed to pixels. (I’d already forgotten some of the details, and I’m not even 10K words in yet!)

And I’ve been fantasizing about future developments for my characters, as well as background details/episodes that might flesh them out. Unfortunately, later I don’t remember most of the ideas, although a couple of strong ones resurfaced when I was going through the pages to do the spreadsheet. I scrawled a few keywords in the margins of those pages, so I can develop them further.

I feel like I’ve let myself get distracted by busy work, but it was necessary busy work. I mean, it was going to have to happen at some point. And in the future (if/when I write a different story/book) I’ll start the character spreadsheet waaaaay sooner in the book-writing process.

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That’s all technical stuff, though.

The real reason I haven’t been writing, and that my house has been quieter than usual, is that life has interfered in an unavoidable way.

The Hubs has been in Tennessee, at his parent’s house. His dad was diagnosed about three weeks ago with pancreatic cancer, late stage, so he was terminal when he got the news. The Hubs has been there this last eight days, helping his mom with his dad physically, as well as with the work of sorting his belongings and finalizing his arrangements.

And this morning, around 5:45, my father-in-law died in his home, attended by his wife and the Hubs and a hospice nurse.

I’ve been here with our teenage son, taking care of the eight cats and three dogs, working my usual schedule. I couldn’t take off from work on such short notice (due to needing coverage, not due to a lack of leave), although I will be automatically approved off for three days of bereavement. Now I wait to hear what arrangements have been made in Tennessee, so I can take our son and join my husband and his family there.

It’s been hard for me to focus on a romance while I’ve been waiting for news about a family tragedy. Understandably.

Until life settles again, in whatever pattern that may be, I don’t anticipate much creative output. Busy work may be all I can manage.

Because my family is more important than the story.

And the story will wait for a while. I’ll just have to keep a notepad handy, so I can jot down some of my ideas when they’re fresh. There might be gold in there, just waiting to be mined and shaped. I hope.